Cline, Eric H. 1177 B.C: The Year Civilization Collapsed, Revised and Updated Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Every so often, books slip through the cracks. Even when you devour multiple courses on their subject matter, own a relatively extensive library on the period for a non-specialist, and attend the author’s talk on the book when it comes out, sometimes adult life just gets in the way. So it was with me and Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C. Then, at long last, spring of 2023 brought me a copy. Thankfully years of expectation did not build my hopes up too high, and while I did have some reservations about its organization, the case Cline presents is the best and most persuasive I’ve yet read as to why civilization indeed collapsed at the beginning of the 13th century BC.
For those unfamiliar with the Late Bronze Age and its eventual collapse, Cline opens his work with a lengthy discussion of that vibrant historical period. The empires of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Mittani, and the Hittites exchange courtly letters and prestige goods; Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Canaanites knit together a complex network of trade binding together the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean; statecraft and economics begin to operate on a high, intricate level approaching some kind of limited globalization. For both this golden age and the collapse that follows, Cline brilliantly conducts readers through archaeologists’ own journey of discovery through excavation, debate, and new information over the past century. Indeed, 1177 B.C. can read more like a detective novel than a monograph at times–a perfect way to present this fascinating yet imperfectly-understood era of history. For all my familiarity with the subject, even I found myself pulled along for the ride as I caught up on nearly a decade’s worth of developments in the field, and Cline’s ultimate explanation of a perfect storm of calamities, spearheaded by a centuries-long megadrought, leading to the collapse of this fragile integrate system is the most persuasive I’ve yet read.
For all these strengths, though, I did have a number of (admittedly minor) critiques of Cline’s work, first and foremost being its organization. While the detective format is certainly engaging, it also leads to numerous tangents, backtracks, and “as mentioned above/belows,” especially in the early chapters that I couldn’t help but feel should have been avoided with a more streamlined narrative. I was also disappointed that Cline never explicitly broached the idea that the famous “Sea Peoples” could have been refugee peoples displaced by the early stages of the collapse rather than a concurrent cause and that comparisons with similar historical movements–chief among them, the medieval Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian invasions of Britain–were never explored to make better sense of such violent settler migrations in the ancient world. This was even more frustrating for me given Cline’s insistence on making the Late Bronze Age Collapse a cautionary tale for our modern world, thus missing opportunities for cogent historical inquiry in favor of doomsaying appeals for modern relevance.
These reservations are largely a matter of personal taste, however, and whether you are already an ancient history aficionado or totally new the period, 1177 B.C. offers a wealth of information in a largely compelling format. As someone who has been on the lookout for a good, accessible, single-volume work on the Late Bronze Age to recommend to others, I think I finally have my prize.